Good Single Coil-Sized Humbucker for Tele Bridge

I have a fairly new Highway One Telecaster with stock pickups. I love their clean sound, but when going into distorted leads, they just don't really cut it. I want to get that wailing, les paul bridge lead tone out of my tele, without spending too much dough. Ive looked into the mini seymour duncan pups, but dont really know which ones to go for. I'm new to modding guitars, as you may already notice. :grin: Will the SD give me that sound? Or what do I go with...

Thanks!

I just installed one on my friends Tele and I was impressed how good it sounded. It should give you what you're looking for.

Little 59
+1

Remember that if you do choose a Seymour Duncan, if you mate it with an existing Fender bridge pickup in the usual fashion you will be wiring up out of phase. Test play a Classic Baja Tele for that out of phase sound, decide if you like it a lot; you'll be giving up the usual bridge and neck, parallel in phase sound we all treasure.
One solution? Make sure you get a bucker with four leads; that way you can reverse the phase, have both pups in phase to one another.

I am intrigued by your observations. I, too have a new 2006 Highway One Tele, and I don't care for the pickups. I felt they did OK at distortion (but I'm not a distortion guy) but fell flat on clean tones. Think about replacing the pickups as a unit; I've had maybe 10 different types of single coil Tele bridge pickups, this one ranks last.

Bubbanov

I just bought a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Tele Humbucker, but alas I haven't had the chance to try it out yet. They're probably a bit less Tele-like than the 59, so I've heard, but have really good sustain and a strong midrange.

Another option is the Harmonic Design Super 90. It's a tele bridge sized P90ish pickup that sounds pretty outstanding. Crunchy and hot, good lead properties and it maintains the twang!

I would consider getting up with Pete Biltoff at vintage vibe guitars .com, I have several of his p90's in various guitars and he is both honest and reasonable, IMO, Bil

+3 on the lil 59

+4 on 59, got a lil 59 for tele in the bridge. had it in there for about 2.5 years now, and its amazing...really versatile for most styles of music, and reacts well to rolling off the volume. if u want a good screaming les paul tone in your tele, but still a bit of the bite...you can't go wrong!

How is the clean tone with the lil 59? I have Antiquity neck and bridge in another tele and love the clean tone as well as overdriven. I've checked the sound clips on the Duncan website and clean it sounds dull.

I just popped a Little '59 in a Strat (the Strat version, of course) and while I like the sound with OD/distortion quite a bit, the clean tones are about as uninteresting as you can imagine. Don't like it clean at all.

Barden......

In this realm, ( bridge over drive tones ) Dimarzio ( IMHO of course, ymmv ) has the goods. Tone Zone T, Chopper T, Super Distortion T, Air T, Fast Track T do the job in a most splendid way. Asan added bonus, the split tone on the Tone Zone T is very nice and twangy.

On the cheap, Refin had a clip with a Dragonfire rail ( I think! ) that sounded real darn good for a $29 pickup.

Barden......1+

I'm assuming that this can be wired as well to work as just a single coil? If i get a 4way switch?

I don't have any experience with these other pickups, but I like my GFS Cool Vintage Lil Puncher XL. Cheap, but twangy and clucky.

John

I had Lil 59 on my MIJ for about 10 years and then I changed it to the BM pu. I really liked the 59 as I have a BL in the neck and the two together were really good for blues and Jazz.

THe lil '59 will do you some good Gibson-type sounds, and you can put it through a push/pull to get either single coil or parallel humbucking for some more tele-like sounds. A Hot STack at the bridge will give you a hot tele with a normal tele option. Use a Vintage Stack in the neck with another push/pull along with a 4-way selector and you have more combinations than you are used to....12 form way big to gut-bucket swamp, out-of-phase things.
I like the lil '59 for the adjustable polepieces along with the more-Gibson like tone in the series mode.
If you want some of the best tele sounds in a humbucker, then Barden is the only option imo.

i personally find that i quite like the sound of my lil 59 clean. i remembered this post the other day when myself and a friend hooked up our guitars for a jam. now...everyones taste is differant, but for certain applications it has an amazing sounding clean. but it's not great clean tones for everything. jazz? blues? not really, that's why i've got a p-90/humbucker hybrid in the neck. middle position is quite sweet too. you have two, or even three pickups in your guitar for a reason. i might add it has amazingly good overdrive too.

Another vote for Lil '59.

I've had it in my Partscaster (currently Partsquire) for over a year now. Very responsive pickup IMHO. You can control the sound very much with your picking style. In fact, I was a plectrum-only guy for a long time, but after I changed to Lil '59 I have found myself using a hybrid style a lot. I use the no-tone position in my partscaster a lot, control the tone with my fingers and use plectrum during solos. Also, not too much Gibson-ish sound AFAIC.